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Forum:Paul di Filippo "World Wars III" - interesting little story
The other day I found this little gem on the web: Paul di Filippo's World Wars III. It's an alternate history with a dash of time travel. I thought you guys would enjoy a quick read. It takes familiar names, places and ideas and twists them kinda in the way Turtledove does. It also references Thomas Pynchon, for those of you who like his stuff. JudgeFisher (talk) 21:56, October 1, 2012 (UTC) :Hmm, interesting. Thanks for pointing it out. Turtle Fan (talk) 15:37, October 2, 2012 (UTC) :That story's stuck with me all day. Thought provoking: Is the chance to break the endless cycle of total war worth the risk of a nuclear deterrent? If the deterrent doesn't work, certainly not. How likely it was to fail is a pretty impossible problem to solve. Certainly both alternatives presented are horrible, horrible, horrible. Much to my chagrin, my imagination keeps trying to come up with exactly what they saw in the command center that had everyone so disturbed. :Some nitpicking: Why was a new recruit stationed at such an important base? If he enlisted at 18, he must have had a pretty basic education; had he been some sort of Doogie Howser, they wouldn't've given him guard duty. Yet he'd have to know a hell of a lot of history and science to do what he did, and he wouldn't have had time to come up with a lot of books or something given his spur-of-the-moment decision. :Oddest of all (aside from the time machine just lying around for no reason, and the grunt knowing exactly what to do with it) is this: For someone whose whole mission in life is to prevent the thinking of dangerous ideas, he's awfully quick to share quite a lot of info with whomever he meets at random in a crowded bar. :I greatly enjoyed trying to piece together the POD from the hints dropped before the time traveller explained everything. A few details really didn't flow from it. I find it nigh on impossible to believe Walesa would play the role he does. :It was fun, though. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:36, October 3, 2012 (UTC) :: Category:ForumYeah, the old "road to hell paved with good intentions" adage sure comes to mind here. The time traveler seems to quickly and mockingly dismiss the potential for his world's Gorbachev / Perestroika. I tried to imagine what they saw as well, and what my mind came up with was the gory stuff, people's skin melting, radiation sickness, possibly cannibalism, or nuclear winter. :: The time traveler's base sure was cosy and convenient to house a time machine and that he could formulate such a plan in all that mayhem and destruction inside the command center itself is quite the stretch. As far as sharing the story with the narrator, my best guess is that the narrator is Thomas Pynchon himself, and that the time traveler saw the potential of a storyteller/writer in him. :: I totally missed the mark with the POD myself. While I agree with you that Walesa wouldn't be in that role, it was kinda fun to see the reversal. I immediately drew parallels with Turtledove's works. Walesa's role reminds me of the one-line mention of Vlasov in The Big Switch, of course James Dean and the Beatles in Worldwar/Colonization, and the bar setting of the Iron Stein of the meeting in Fein's Establishment between the Americans and the Soviets in The Man With the Iron Heart. The biggest parallel I drew was with how The War That Came Early might play out - a WW II decided without the use of atomic weapons. JudgeFisher (talk) 05:33, October 3, 2012 (UTC)